Better Communication with High Information Density
I still remember the first time I was introduced to the idea of information density in communication. It was a lightbulb moment for me. Suddenly, I had a concept and term in my mind to judge the efficiency and clarity of conversations in a way I hadn’t before. I want you to have that same epiphany.
What is information density?
Information density is the amount of relevant information packed into a given amount of text or speech. Achieving high information density means conveying a lot of meaningful, valuable content within a limited number of words or timeframe. This involves prioritizing clarity, being concise and eliminating unnecessary words or filler that doesn’t contribute to your core message. Your goal is to make every word count so that the audience can quickly grasp complex ideas without wading through verbosity or redundancy. High information density can make communication more efficient and effective, especially if you have a limited amount of time to get your message across.
When I moved to Germany in 2016, I worked for a German company with a very international staff. For the first time, I was in meetings with people from all over the world, many of whom spoke English as their second (or third or fourth) language. This experience starkly highlighted the differences between how Americans communicate in English and how non-native speakers do. The contrast was so significant that it inspired me to write a blog post about it: “Simplifying Your Language for Inclusion,” I discussed how the complex and unnecessarily verbose language of Americans limits the clarity of their message.
Here, I bring these two concepts together: simplicity in language and high information density. Together these can help us communicate efficiently with a high volume of information but also make sure that the information is easily understandable and accessible to the reader. Achieving that balance is my ultimate goal, whether I’m writing or speaking.
How can we communicate with higher information density?
Whenever I’m being interviewed for a podcast or writing, my primary objective is clear communication. I could be discussing the most intriguing and captivating new ideas, but if my audience cannot comprehend what I’m trying to say, I have failed. Because of this, I constantly ask myself how can I communicate my thoughts in a way that is clear and accessible to my audience?
To achieve this, I try to avoid complex sentence structures and insinuations. I want my work to be easy to grasp. In my attempt to keep information density high: I try to craft sentences where my points are conveyed clearly, without the clutter of extra words, phrases or tangents that add no value. I constantly self-evaluate my information density, keeping my eyes on the goal: getting my message across as efficiently as possible.
This topic became very important to me as I was writing “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: How to Succeed at an Impossible Job.” The audience for the book already had a big challenge in front of them: starting a daunting job of progressing DEI in their workplace. Why should I make that challenge more difficult by writing a book that is hard to understand by using academic jargon or complex sentence structures? I would be doing a disservice to the reader and to myself.
My secondary goal for the book was to make the reader feel as if they were not just reading a book but having a conversation with me over coffee. To achieve this, I thought about what it’s like to actually have a conversation with me. When I speak, I try to organize my thoughts in a logical way, without interrupting the flow with disconnected or meandering ideas (easier said than done). And I try to create space for the person I’m talking with to contribute, react and share their own perspectives. I tried to write a book that felt like that conversation.
Where I found my Inspiration
To find the correct tone and ease of language for my book, I looked for inspiration. The writer and teacher William Zinsser, author of “On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction”, is one such inspiration. His book is a fun and practical read. In the chapter “Clutter”, he talks about all the unnecessary words and phrases that may make our writing sound more “impressive” or “serious” but actually make it more difficult to understand. He writes: “Clutter is the laborious phrase that has pushed out the short word that means the same thing.” and “Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes. When the Digital Equipment Corporation eliminated 3,000 jobs its statement didn’t mention layoffs; those were ‘involuntary methodologies’.” Now, I fight a personal battle to rid my writing of Clutter.
In the chapter: “Business Writing: Writing in Your Job”, Zinsser writes, “Just because people work for an institution, they don’t have to write like one. Institutions can be warmed up. Administrations can be turned into human beings. Information can be imparted clearly and without pomposity.”
With Zinsser’s guidance, I had my two main tasks: avoid the Clutter and sound like a human, not an institution. On top of that, I remind myself: good communication is not about impressing people with big words, beautiful metaphors or complex sentence structures. I don’t need anyone to be impressed by the language I use. Instead, I want them to understand the message. Language is my tool. If I were writing a different genre, it could make sense to use that tool to craft sentences that weave complex and elegant messages. But when my primary objective is to transfer a message, I use language as a tool for communication, not to impress the reader.
Information Density is most important when the stakes are high
In our day-to-day conversations with friends and family, the clarity or efficiency of communication usually isn’t critical. Your close contacts are always going to be patient, willing to ask questions or inquire about what you meant. However, we don’t always have the luxury of patience and second chances. There are high-stakes situations like job interviews or publishing a book for a wide audience. You only have one chance to make a first impression.
One particular high stakes situation is a first meeting between a startup founder and a potential investor. There, you have only one hour to communicate a complex technical concept to a curious but impatient audience. In these situations, the stakes are high because you might not get the opportunity to talk with them again, and your audience might not have the interest or opportunity to ask a follow-up question if they don’t understand. This is when high information density becomes most critical.
What does high information density feel like?
How do you recognize high information density in the real world? There isn’t a universal formula for achieving high information density in communication. Each situation where you are communicating will be different depending on the audience, content and context of your message. High information density communication can be recognized only by considering the audience: did they understand your message? Could they follow even if they were distracted or tired? When they didn’t have the prior knowledge to fully understand parts of your message, did they manage to grasp at least the most pertinent aspects? Your audience may still have questions at the end but if they understood the logical progression and main points of your message, you’ve done well.
Logical flow is an important element of efficient and clear communication. When you craft an argument, you need to keep in mind the way your audience will absorb the information. Before starting to deliver your argument, first provide the context and base information that will help your audience understand your argument. When you stop your argument mid-way to provide a necessary piece of context, it’s already too late. (In that way, making an argument is a lot like telling a joke. It’s all about the setup.) It’s particularly difficult to do this well when you are extensively familiar with a topic. It’s hard to have a theory of mind of what someone brand new to the topic needs to first understand before building on that information. *Note: the concept of Theory of Mind is really helpful in figuring out how to communicate better. Check out this blog that explores Theory of Mind in depth!
As inspiration for high information density, I suggest CrashCourse videos on Youtube which deliver complex subjects in concise, engaging formats that are really designed to meet the needs of their audience.
The Enemies of information density: fillers, rambling and lack of confidence
Let’s try to figure out what is working against us when we want to increase the information density of our communication. I’ll call these the Enemies of high information density.
The biggest enemies are phrases and words that add no additional value to the message you’re trying to convey. Examples: If I’m being honest, It goes without saying, In a nutshell, I mean, You know, Actually, Sort of / Kind of, The thing is. You may be leaning on these because they create pauses in your narrative that give you some time to think or perhaps they function to soften or hedge your message. But ultimately, you’re adding unnecessary clutter. Your audience has a more difficult time following because of the extra words that need to be absorbed and discarded as irrelevant.
Another enemy is rambling. We’ve all experienced this. Rambling happens when the speaker produces a smattering of concepts and ideas in no particular order. It feels like “word soup”. Often people even interrupt their own argument mid-way, jumping into a whole new idea which is disorienting to follow.
Lack of confidence in a response is also an enemy. Some people think offering many answers to one question gives them more opportunities to be right. But from the audiences’ perspective, the speaker is effectively saying “the first answer didn’t even convince myself, so here’s another one”. It creates a brainstorm instead of a finite answer. It’s ok not to be fully confident in your answer: say so explicitly, but don’t tack on alternatives.
Answering the wrong question instead of clarifying is an enemy of high information density. This takes the form of guessing or assuming the question and launching into a deep rabbit hole of explanation but missing the original question. You’ve provided information, it’s just not the right information, so your information density is close to zero.
How to increase your information density
The best way to improve information density is practice, practice, practice. The more opportunities you have to explain complex concepts or present an argument, the better you will get. But this is not just a matter of talking more, it’s about reflecting on how clear you were and figuring out how to improve. You also have to make an effort. Here are some humble ideas to create opportunities to evaluate your communication and improve information density over time.
- Consciously focus on speaking in short, clear sentences. Avoid long, rambling explanations to questions. Before you answer, take a moment to think about your argument and break it down into shorter sentences that have a logical flow. (By the way, it’s fine to tell your audience you’ll take a moment to think before you respond!)
- Record yourself explaining something you know well, for example, how you make coffee in the morning. Listen back to that explanation and ask yourself if there was anything you could have explained more concisely without losing any detail.
- Record yourself in a regular conversation, for example record your side of the conversation during a meeting. Try to recognize parts of your speech that did not bring any value or new information to the conversation. This technique helps you hone your ear to recognize phrases, words or patterns you might rely on but don’t actually convey information to your listener.
- Next time you hear a High Information Density speaker in the wild, take note. Think about what makes them an efficient communicator. For me, I recently heard a speaker at a conference deliver a talk that had zero wasted words. Every message was clear and easy to understand, and it didn’t even sound rehearsed. Weeks later, I still reflect back on that talk and try to take inspiration from it.
- Ask for feedback. Ask your audience whether your message was clear and if not, which parts they found unclear or confusing. This will help you figure out where you need to focus to improve.
ChatGPT will not save us
In the last year, the use of ChatGPT to create text has become common in almost all aspects of our lives. But, unfortunately, I do not think this gets us towards a world with higher information density and clarity in communication. Here’s why:
I have found that ChatGPT and similar services add unnecessary complexity and reduce efficiency in communication. They produce text with formal business language which is full of clutter and phrases that people never actually say aloud in real life. This makes you sound like an institution, not a human! And, when you prompt them to sound less formal, they produce text that sounds like an undercover agent pretending to be a teenager. This has the effect of making the generated text feel impersonal and insincere. In short: William Zinsser would not approve.
But here’s the real problem: ChatGPT allows anyone to create blocks of text instantly, so people rely on it without criticizing the quality of the output. It’s rather the opposite: ChatGPT gives the prompter a sense of confidence: the content was created by an “expert” machine, so surely it must be better than the output of a mere human! The ChatGPT style of language often lacks clarity due to the frequent use of hedging, and couching. It constructs “middle of the road” narratives with lots of filler and few relevant ideas. So, unless ChatGPT improves significantly, or humans figure out how to use it as a supportive tool without relying on it to generate final texts, I don’t think it’s helping us get to a world with higher information density, at least for now.
But I do have hope for the future. I know we will be communicating even more in virtual environments. Our collective efficiency and clarity of language will need to improve. This will force us to spend more time on the content of our messaging as opposed to the language that we use to craft it. Ultimately, we must realize that high information density acts as a beacon for attention. This helps get our message out there to more people, in less time and space. Let’s work towards that future.
